Gadgets of days gone by: Samsung Trace, spinphone

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This week at CrunchGear, we’re looking back at some of our favorite gadgets from the not-so-distant past — old phones, computers, media players, toys… those devices that still stand out in our memories despite their obsolescence. Feel free to contribute some of your own nostalgia.

The Samsung Trace, or SGH-T519, was not an especially capable phone. Oh, it had its little feature-phone games and a bright screen and all that, but it really only had two things going for it. One: sucker was (and still is) so thin you’d forget it was in your pocket, and two: you could spin that mother.

Look, there’s no other way to explain it, just watch the video.

See? I don’t have any other device, save perhaps a yoyo or top, that will spin like that. It’s because the highest point on the phone when it’s face-up is the little circular “OK” button (possibly the tiny ridge above it? -yeah, definitely), which also happens to be exactly in the center of the phone. And the phone just happens to be perfectly balanced so it doesn’t drag on one side.

Yeah, it’s kind of a weird reason to love a device, but it’s little things like this that breed affection with our devices — not the apps, not the firmware upgrades or storage capacity. The best features of many devices often aren’t listed.